Keeping tabs on content deliverers

By Cassimir Medford
Network World, 09/11/00

So you've contracted with a content-delivery network provider - now how do you know your Web site is really performing better?

Well, you subscribe to Keynote Systems, a San Mateo, Calif., company that is rapidly becoming the standard for Web site performance measurement. Most of the leading content-delivery networks even resell Keynote subscriptions as part of their service packages. For instance, Akamai Technologies says it will deliver content up to 10 times faster than a standard Web site. "Through Keynote, we offer independent monthly reports. We won't do a tap dance," says Andrew Lickly, a product manager for Akamai, in Cambridge, Mass.

Keynote uses 520 monitoring computers at 120 locations to access Web sites and take measurements 24-7. Many IT executives are relying on those reports to make some expensive decisions.

"We really rely on Keynote. Today, there are so many companies that offer some piece of your network that it is tough to figure out how each one is doing," says Dan Leichtenschlag, chief technology officer at Sportsline.com, a Web site devoted to sports coverage.

"How do we know if UUNET, Exodus [Communications] or Akamai are doing the job? When you have a problem, which is to blame? We use Keynote to keep track of everybody," Leichtenschlag says.

Keynote measures 40 business and consumer sites around the world every 15 minutes. It aggregates the data and creates an index called the Business 40, which works like the Dow Jones Index.

"Customers see what's the average for those 40 sites - which are the top performers, which are the worst performers. We send that data to customers so they can compare their own site to the index," says Eric Siegel, senior Internet consultant at Keynote. "We do all kinds of diagnostics and trace-routes to find out where the bottlenecks are that cause the performance slowdowns."

IT executives can craft the data in many different ways, to see how the site has performed over two weeks, six weeks or the past 24 hours. Keynote also offers reports for nontechnical executives.

Keynote's minimum subscription includes the monitoring of one URL from 10 locations. It costs about $500 per month.

Medford is a networking writer.

Back to main story

To top